An old friend swims away

The wobbly jamboree swarmed in to nibble at anything that was dropped into the algae-laden water. Anything. Pebbles, dead insects, leaves. Even spit. Particularly spit. Our mucus was their favourite.  

Within weeks of the first showers, they were omniscient like the moisture, like the blood-red kunnikkuru – millions of Cadbury Gems-like seeds scattered across the landscape.

She and her friends appeared out of nowhere even as the intense monsoon air cafuned me, when the fine, incessant drizzle played mist in my part of the world. Hitherto dead and muddy water bodies sprang forth with life every June. And when the ponds and canals filled up, she would slip into the ancient lanes and pebbled paths with the gurgling overflow.

For years we were companions. Many were the damp, lazy afternoons of my boyhood and teens 

when I watched over her, tried to hold her, as she frolicked without a care.

We never got introduced though.

Not when I sneaked out of home with twine, hook and earthworms dug up from the backyard of my elderly abode, just to meet her. Not when a cousin named her Thuppaloothi – broadly, spit-eater – for me, just to avoid elaborate explanations. Not when my friends called her Sooli. Not even when she was the star resident of my aquarium.  

Yes, I was in love with her. How could I not be? Pale ochre, with an unmistakable black and red strips

running across her lithe body. For a long time I was convinced that the ethereal one had descended from the skies with the rains. Just like the abrupt profusion of foliage – the medicinal communist paccha, the leathery and ferocious-looking chena-ila, the shy thottaavaadi and the sensuous thumba.

So enamoured was I that once, asked to buy sugar from the corner grocer for the evening tea, I spent three hours leching at her. Indeed, I almost had her in my palms that day, only to be startled by my furious grandpa’s booming voice and that ominous cane.

Thuppaloothi was never alone. The Kannanchaathan was a loner. But he was the smartest too. He would jump out of the water and land at another spot, leaving predators baffled. Paddy fields and temple ponds were home to a variety of Parals and Blaappys. Packs of catfish – Muzhu, Kadu and Etta – were the most slippery, with slithering bodies and stings.

 

Schools of goldfish-like tiny ones indicated the presence of the mighty mother Vraal right underneath. She was the bigger boys’ favourite catch.

As others of my age dived from ever higher jackfruit branches, their fall broken by climbers and creepers, for me, it was the smaller drains and tanks. ‘What lies beneath’ held the allure for me. I felt lifting that veil of mystery by going underwater would spoil it. Truth be told, I was just pathologically scared of chest-deep waters.

Often I would be dipping my palms into the very gutter that would have someone peeing into it just a few metres away. Let’s believe the water flowed in the direction that left no disgust.
 

But that was my world. My own world. Of Kumblakottans, cuckoos, cashew apples and bicycles hired for Rs 2 an hour.

Today, the neighbourhood pond lies unused and lifeless. Bathrooms are the new attorneys of modesty. No more careless frolicking – neither us, nor her. Many of her companions vanishing, Thuppaloothi too seems to be in her last lap.

A few years back, when she was tagged on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, I finally got her name. Denison’s Barb, the freshwater fish species, is among the biggest conservation challenges of the Western Ghats.

They tell me the mistiming monsoon still brings down its version of the mist on the undulating landscapes of my hiraeth. But it misses its progeny.

A monsoon sad and lonely.
 

Thuppaloothi
Born: In my boyhood

Died: Before I do